


And No Orchids Grow

by Byacolate, scoobertdoobert



Series: Pit Viper [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Fairy Tale Elements, M/M, Oni Genji Shimada, Sanzang Zenyatta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-15
Updated: 2017-02-15
Packaged: 2018-09-24 13:43:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9742442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Byacolate/pseuds/Byacolate, https://archiveofourown.org/users/scoobertdoobert/pseuds/scoobertdoobert
Summary: A mountain cannot stop the road; it can find its own way across.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A fun little collab with the unbelievably talented, wonderful, magical, mystical [freckled-king](http://freckled-king.tumblr.com/) whom I adore.
> 
> The amazing comic can be found on its own [here!](http://freckled-king.tumblr.com/post/157259957087/in-a-voice-so-perfectly-polite-it-borders)
> 
> Now with [more amazing art by rkanahi!](https://rkanahi.tumblr.com/post/167938334861/i-think-ill-keep-you-inspired)  
> 

It begins like this:

 

An evening hunt, four hours in. Evening turns to dusk turns to night, and the cicadas hum their deafening discord. He loves summer nights, when the sticky-hot air chills the barest degree and the forest pulses with life. Glow-eyed owls watch his progression from their perches in the trees, but the foxes pay him no mind.

 

A black bear wanders across his path, plodding along without a care, like it knows it isn’t the quarry he seeks. Game as simple as this could never sustain him for long.

 

Still, as always, the raccoon dogs of the mountain disappear at the first of his footfalls.

 

Nothing disturbs his mountain like the presence of man. He’d awoken from his slumber deep within the stone to feel the fall of each foot as it moved along the earth,

 

The locals rarely dare to tread here, as his reputation precedes him. The few who dare to risk his attention for pride, or for love, or a convenient death, or the healing springs hidden near the top do not last very long, one way or another. More often come the adventurers, monks and princes and castaways from distant lands who fear no mountain demon for irreverence or foolishness or pride, or all three.

 

Some strike bargains. Those are always fun.

 

He wonders if this one, with footfalls soft as snow, will try to pique his interest.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

 

His interest is piqued.

 

From a den dug out of a derelict tree trunk, two leopard cat cubs watch him approach the figure slumped against a nearby tree. The long brown body of a mamushi lies cold and still in the scant space between man and beast, but its head is… ah, there at the trespasser’s side, its fangs stained red with blood.

 

He crouches down before the dying man, resting elbows on his knees. Slowly, a masked face turns up toward his. The stranger wears a crown, ornate robes, but he doesn’t smell of splendor. For all his finery, his scent is humble. No oils. No perfumes. Soil on his feet, sap on his fingers. Blood trickling from the bite on his bare calf.

 

“Greetings,” says the masked stranger, his voice faint. His head bobs once in its effort remain upright. Polite, for a dying man.

 

“Greetings,” he returns. “I am the demon of the mountain.”

 

“Greetings, lord demon of the mountain.” A hand slips from the man’s chest to his stomach. “I would stand to greet you, but I fear I could not manage.”

 

“I can see that.” He cocks his head to the side to regard the gaping mouth of the pit viper, victorious even in death. The softest tread of a paw upon a mossy root draws his gaze up to a cub, braver than its brother, creeping from the stump. A low hum from the stranger catches his attention once more.

 

“The mother is hunting,” he rasps, panting. The demon wonders why he does not remove his mask. “The viper sought... to embrace this opportunity.”

 

“And you intervened. A saint and a fool.”

 

“I understood the risk,” laughs the mask, but faintly. “But I learned that even severed, a head can bite.”

 

“That’s the funny thing about severed heads,” he agrees. Even as the cub moves in to investigate the mamushi, with what little strength he has left, the trespasser lifts a hand to wave it away. It goes skittering, scrambling back to the safety of the tree as all creatures do in the presence of man.

 

All but the demon who, after all, is intrigued.

 

“Won’t you bargain with me for your life?” he asks while he watches the life seep from the man before him. An indiscernible noise comes before a handful of shallow breaths.

 

“Is it you who holds my life, lord demon of the mountain? Was it not the viper?”

 

“Mamushi _took_ your life.” He taps at his own chest with two fingers. “I can give it back.”

 

“I have nothing to bargain for it,” says the mask, hands slipping down to fall to the forest floor by his sides. “But I would accept... an instance of charity.”

 

He finds himself snickering through his teeth. “You have a fundamental misunderstanding of demons.”

 

Still… for reasons beyond him, though likely steeped in intrigue, he curls a hand around the muscled girth of the stranger’s calf, and lifts. The robes slip down from his knee to his thigh, and it might be more distracting if not for the venom he can feel stealing every wisp of life from the mask.

 

“This is a favor, not a gift,” he warns, and digs his thumb into the snake bite.

  
  
  
  


 

 

 

“I think I’ll keep you,” he says in the velvet blue of almost-dawn. It’s nearly time for him to retreat, and now, he’ll have something - someone - in tow.

 

The vitality he’d used to fill the masked man takes a week’s worth of convalescence and slices it thin to a mere handful of hours, long enough for the mother leopard cat to return, far more wary of the savior than the demon. So they’ve moved away, at the insistence of a man who’d only just escaped the grasping claws of death by the mercy of an ogre.

 

He intends to take the wanderer with him, of course. It is his right as the mountainkeeper, as lord of all the blood spilt upon stone, and as warden of a life debt.

 

So he says, “I think I’ll keep you,” reaching out and circling his fingers around a wrist, just above a heavy band of bronze.

 

His legs are swept out beneath him so quickly even he doesn’t see it coming. A strangled yelp pushes from his chest on impact with the ground. Dazed, he regards the mask from the forest floor just as the sun breaks over the mountains in the distance, its soft golden gaze swathing the robed figure in light.

 

In a voice so perfectly polite it borders criminality, his quarry replies: “I think you will not.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

 

The monk follows of his own free will, good-natured and grateful despite toppling him to the ground. His name is Zenyatta, and he seems to speak only in pleasantries. Bested in combat before he’d known he had been engaged, the demon of the mountain offers one of his many names in return.

 

“You have saved my life. I can do no less than accompany you for a time.”

 

If that’s how he wants to frame it, the demon won’t argue.

 

Zenyatta knows quite a lot about the mountain, as he proves with an endless and unerring stream of consciousness as they walk. It has been some time since he’s really spoken with another person, human or otherwise, and the ogre… allows it. Enjoys it.

 

His elder brother was always the stick in the mud between them, but it seems age and isolation have rendered them equal in time. Conversational skills return to him slowly, his humor once boisterous turned wry, so mostly he contents himself just to listen. And in his listening he discovers this one intriguing human’s cleverness, his sense of humor so subtle it nearly goes undetected. But the demon listens, and amusement blooms in him like a lotus in summer.

 

If he was sent to exorcise the demon, he has an interesting way of going about it.

 

He can’t remember the last time he lingered so long under the sun, an irritant and taxing in turns, but when he finally draws Zenyatta to the mouth of the mountain at midday, Zenyatta stops.

 

“Join me,” the demon says. His companion folds his hands before him.

 

“I have enjoyed your company,” says he, “but I will go no further.”

 

“And I have enjoyed yours.” His tone is entreating, and he wonders at the change. Carefully, he clings to his imposing nature, his voice turned stern. “Return with me into the mountain.”

 

“No, thank you.”

 

He folds his arms over his chest, staring into the eyes he can see through the mask. Cautiously, he tastes the word on his tongue before he allows it. “... Please.”

 

A pleased hum drifts between them from behind Zenyatta’s mask.

 

“I am to remain on the mountain for seven days. If you would wander it with me, I will remain here and meditate while you rest. If you join me at nightfall, we will walk together again.” He unclasps his hands to spread them. “This is my offer of compromise.”

 

“Compromise,” he mutters in an ancient tongue, huffing like a spawnling. “You won’t be moved.”

 

“I fear not.”

 

“And if another mamushi strikes?”

 

“Then I will wait for your return, and I will owe you my life twice over, or it will be wrested from me.” He turns from the demon and sits, legs folded, hands upon his knees on a flat slate of stone. It’s a position of discipline, but Zenyatta appears entirely relaxed. “I will wait for your return,” he says, turning his face up toward the demon once more. “I hope to see you again, Genji.”

 

He hasn’t heard his name uttered so easily in so long, and now it lays between them, dusted off in the midday sun. The demon slowly retreats into the cave.

 

“At least try not to die,” the demon - the ogre - Genji mutters as he leaves.

 

Laughter like temple chimes follows him down the cave.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title and summary are both taken from Journey to the West. Another very apt one: “The traveller feels lonely on the road; monastic robes do not keep out the cold.” 
> 
> scoobertdoobert's Tumblr: [freckled-king](http://freckled-king.tumblr.com/)  
> Byacolate's Tumblr: [wardencommando](http://wardencommando.tumblr.com/).  
> 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [And No Orchids Grow & All The Gardens I Have Ever (Pit Viper series)[Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11299500) by [Arioch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arioch/pseuds/Arioch)




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